The national drugs team investigate the source of cannabis pulled from the sea off the Cork coast.
The cannabis haul, estimated to be worth around half a million pounds, was found in the nets of a French trawler southwest of Kinsale. Cannabis resin wrapped in two bales, is being examined at the Cork headquarters of the national drugs team.
The resin was in hard, dark brown blocks. The question to be answered now is where did it come from.
Markings on the resin may assist in identifying where it originated. Tom Lennon, from the Revenue Commissioners, suspects the drugs originated in Morocco but investigations are still ongoing.
In Kinsale, talk was of the significant find which had been made 60 miles south of the port by a French trawler. Last summer, other French fishing boats picked up cannabis off the Welsh shore. That particular haul was estimated to be worth in the region of nine million pounds. Tom Lennon said that it would be difficult to say at present if the Kinsale find was part of the same consignment found off the Welsh coast.
We don't know whether it was dumped overboard deliberately or whether it was because of some panic reaction that it was dropped overboard.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 24 November 1993. The reporter is Tom MacSweeney.
